Why exact fit can decide the success of treatment
When irradiating superficial tumors, every millimeter counts. Even the smallest air gaps between skin and bolus material can alter the radiation dose actually delivered – with direct consequences for treatment quality.
The challenge of conventional bolus materials
Conventional boli are often placed on the skin and fixed with adhesive tape. Especially in anatomically challenging body regions – such as the chest wall, the head and neck area, or the extremities – it is often not possible to achieve fully tight contact with the skin.
The result: air gaps between bolus and tissue can reduce the desired surface dose. Because positioning can vary slightly with each treatment fraction, the reproducibility of treatment also suffers. Scientific studies indicate that these effects can influence the planned dose distribution.
Patient-specific solutions are becoming increasingly important
One option is to produce individual 3D-printed boli. They offer a very good fit, but come with additional planning effort, longer preparation times and higher costs.
What is needed are solutions that can be adapted quickly and easily to individual anatomy while enabling high precision.
BolusCare™: individually moldable
With BolusCare's™ two-component bolus, an alternative is now available that can be modeled directly on the patient. After mixing the two components, the material is shaped to the desired body contour within minutes and then cures into a stable form.
The advantages:
- patient-specific adaptation to anatomy
- significantly reduced air gaps between bolus and skin
- reproducible positioning throughout the entire course of treatment
- more precise dose calculation through capturing the bolus already in the planning CT
- high patient comfort and simple clinical application
In addition to classic indications such as chest wall, skin, or head and neck tumors, the procedure opens up further applications, for example in electron irradiation or patient-specific moulages in brachytherapy.
Whitepaper: background, studies and practical application
How significant the influence of air gaps actually is, what clinical benefits patient-specific boli offer, and why the moldable two-component bolus represents an interesting alternative to 3D-printed solutions, is explained in detail in our whitepaper.
Among other things, it covers:
- the physical fundamentals of dose build-up
- scientific findings on the significance of air gaps
- a comparison between standard, 3D-printed and moldable boli
- practical applications across various indications
- clinical experience from radiotherapy